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April 8, 2007 


Taliban say kill Afghan hostage
08 Apr 2007 12:01:30 GMT
More  KABUL, April 8 (Reuters) - The Taliban on Sunday killed the Afghan translator of an Italian journalist kidnapped last month after the government refused to free several insurgent prisoners, a Taliban official said.

"We waited a lot, but the government failed to meet our demand. Therefore, we killed him today," a spokesman for Taliban military chief Mullah Dadullah, Shahabuddin Aatil, told Reuters by satellite phone.

La Repubblica reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo was kidnapped along with his driver and the translator early last month. The Italian was freed after about two weeks when Kabul released five senior Taliban, but his driver was beheaded and the translator held.
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Taliban renew threat to kill Afghan hostage
Sun Apr 8, 5:08 AM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - Taliban militants on Sunday renewed threats to kill an Afghan reporter they are holding hostage unless the government agrees to release some jailed insurgents in the next 24 hours.

The fate of five other Taliban hostages including two French nationals captured last week would be decided following a Monday deadline in the case of Ajmal Naqshbandi, who was kidnapped last month with an Italian journalist.

"Monday is the last deadline. He (Ajmal) will be killed unless the government complies with our demands," Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP by telephone.

Ahmadi reiterated the fundamentalist movement's demand for the release of Taliban prisoners in Afghan jails. Originally, they had requested the freedom of two militants in exchange for Naqshbandi.

The spokesman said the fate of two French aid workers and three Afghan assistants abducted on Tuesday would be addressed once the deadline had passed.

"They are in our custody and we'll decide their fate once we're done with Ajmal's case," Ahmadi said.

The French aid workers from Terre d'Enfance (A World for Our Children) were abducted in southwestern Nimroz province. The province's governor and police chief said the hostages were likely to have been moved to neighbouring Helmand.

Naqshbandi was captured in Helmand province on March 4 with Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo, who was freed around two weeks later in a controversial exchange for five Taliban prisoners.

Their Afghan driver was beheaded.

President Hamid Karzai vowed Friday not to make any more hostage deals with the Taliban, saying the one he made last month to free Mastrogiacomo was an "extraordinary" situation.

"It was an extraordinary situation and won't be repeated again," Karzai told a press conference in Kabul on Friday.

"No more deals with no one and with no other country."
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7 killed in Taliban attack on Afghan demining team
Sun Apr 8, 2:07 AM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - Dozens of Taliban militants attacked a US-funded mine-clearing team in southern  Afghanistan, killing three deminers, three guards and one female passer-by, police said.

The attack on the demining team working for the US-based demining company RONCO in western Farah province on Saturday was the latest in a wave of violence blamed on the Taliban insurgents, police said.

"The Taliban attacked a demining team. Three deminers and three guards supporting them were killed," a highway police official, Saydo Jan told AFP. "One Afghan woman nearby was also killed in the shootout," he said.

Five other people nearby including three women were wounded in the attack in the province's Bakwa district, the police official said, blaming the attack on Taliban militants active in the area.

Afghanistan is the world's second most mined country, the result of years of war and insurgency.

The crew were travelling to the western city of Herat from Taliban-dominated Kandahar when they came under attack.

In a separate incident on Saturday, US warplanes bombed a Taliban hideout, killing five militants in Zabul province.

"The combined force used coalition close air support to drop munitions on the Taliban position. Secondary explosions killed the five Taliban fighters," the US military said in a statement.

It said a weapons cache in nearby caves was also destroyed in the bombardment. It did not give details.

Taliban, despite being ousted from power five years ago, are still able to carry out attacks. As part of their campaign they have been attacking Afghan and foreign troops as well as aid workers and journalists.

The rebels kidnapped two French aid workers along with their three Afghan assistants in neighboring Nimroz on Tuesday. The rebels are still holding the hostages.
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NATO soldier killed in Afghanistan
By RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan - A roadside bomb killed one  NATO soldier and wounded two others Sunday in southern  Afghanistan, an official said.

The bomb exploded Sunday morning, said Lt. Col. Maria Carl, a spokeswoman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force. She declined to give further details about the victims or where the attack took place.

Earlier, the ISAF press office said there was an attack with some casualties in southern Zabul province, but would not confirm whether this was the same attack as the one Carl mentioned.

Also Sunday in eastern Nangarhar province, a suicide car bomber blew himself up next to a U.S.-led coalition convoy, said Ghafor Khan, spokesman for the provincial police chief. Khan said no troops or civilians were killed or wounded in the incident.

Meanwhile in eastern Khost province, a gunman riding on the back of a motorcycle opened fire on Afghans working for ISAF, killing two of the men and wounding another, ISAF said in a statement.

The latest violence came days after more than 1,000 NATO and Afghan troops retook Sangin district in Helmand province, the world's biggest opium-producing region.

The next step will be for NATO forces to hand over control of the area to Afghan security forces, Carl said, adding that NATO already has transported about 500 Afghan forces to the south.

The operation to retake the town from militants started late Wednesday and is part of NATO's largest ever offensive in Afghanistan, Operation Achilles, launched last month to flush out Taliban militants from the northern tip of Helmand province.

About 4,500 NATO and 1,000 Afghan forces are in and around Helmand province as part of Operation Achilles. In the last several months, Taliban militants and foreign fighters have streamed into the province, according to U.S. and NATO officials.
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WFP Accelerates Emergency Aid To Flood Stricken Afghanistan
Voice of America By Lisa Schlein Geneva 07 April 2007
The World Food Program says it is accelerating delivery of emergency relief supplies to thousands of flooding victims in Afghanistan. It says it has so far managed to deliver enough emergency rations to feed 60,000 Afghans, but more people are in need. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from Geneva.

The rains began in mid-March, as is normal for this time of year. But the rains were exceptionally heavy and combined with melting snow to turn the routine into a catastrophe for tens of thousands of Afghans.

A spokesman for the World Food Program, Simon Pluess, says Afghanistan's vice president has declared 13 of the country's 34 provinces as disaster areas because of the extensive damage caused by the flooding.

"The floods, since the beginning of the rains, have claimed dozens of peoples lives, scores of domestic livestock," he said.

"It has destroyed or damaged thousands of homes and washed away tens of thousands of hectares of cultivated land. So, for example, we have 300 kilometers of road that have been washed away that kind of cuts the north and south from Kabul," Pluess added.

WFP estimates 500 homes have been damaged or destroyed and 900 families have been displaced by the flooding in Kabul.

Simon Pluess says while the situation in the capital is serious, more worrying still is the plight of thousands of people who are stranded in remote mountainous regions. He says these areas are beyond immediate help because many of the access roads are cut off by landslides and avalanches.

"It can take quite awhile in this country to get food and other assistance to people that are often far away" said Pluess. "These people, most often, do not only need food. They also need shelter because their houses have been washed away. They need blankets and medicine if they have been hurt."

Pluess says WFP's relief program is running into particular problems in the flooded southern province of Helmand, where there are frequent clashes between insurgents and government and international forces.
The WFP official says trucks carrying food for flood victims often are attacked by what he describes as anti-government elements.
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A united front against the Taliban
Munir Akram Sunday, April 8, 2007 The International Herald Tribune
As the spring fighting season opens, Afghanistan faces many challenges: terrorism, the Taliban, Islamic extremism, drugs and criminals, warlords and factional friction, weak government and an inadequate national and international security presence.

This is a good time to put together a strategy to overcome those challenges. This strategy must build peace through a bottom-up approach - village by village, district by district - by offering incentives and disincentives to secure the support of local populations.

Winning the hearts and minds of the people is even more important than killing or capturing insurgents. Military tactics that cause collateral civilian casualties and damage property may kill 10 terrorists, but they will create 100 more. Most important, no strategy will succeed without accelerated reconstruction and economic development. It must offer hope to the people - hope for peace, jobs and better lives.

Pakistan's frontier regions have seen tremendous support for extremism during the three decades of conflict in Afghanistan. After the Taliban's ouster in late 2001, thousands of Qaeda and Taliban fighters crossed into Pakistan. We are committed to eliminating their influence. This is essential for Pakistan's goals of rapid modernization and increased trade and energy links with Central Asia.

Any strategy for stabilization in Afghanistan's south and southeast must go hand-in-hand with efforts in Pakistan's frontier region. Contrary to criticisms from some in Kabul and Washington, Pakistan has made significant contributions to such stabilization.

First, the Pakistan Army and intelligence services have captured more than 700 Qaeda terrorists and destroyed most of the group's command structure on our side of the border. As Vice President Dick Cheney has noted: "We have captured and killed more Al Qaeda in Pakistan than any place else." In this, we have paid dearly: In 90 operations, Pakistan has lost some 700 soldiers. But this has not deterred us. Al Qaeda is on the run. It will certainly not be allowed to regroup on our soil.

Second, we have captured more than 1,500 Taliban militants in the past three years, including a large part of the leadership. Of course, we can do only so much considering that the Taliban's centers for recruitment, financing and command are in Afghanistan.

Third, Pakistan is making new efforts to control its difficult 1,500-mile border with Afghanistan. Today 80,000 Pakistani troops are deployed in the tribal areas and along the border. Some 1,000 border posts have been established. We are also starting stricter measures to regulate legal border traffic between Pakistan and Afghanistan - about 300,000 people cross each day - by, among other means, introducing biometric cards to improve identity checks. (I must note that it is not very helpful when border guards on the Afghan side cut up and throw away these cards.)

Of course, the movement of militants goes in both directions. Control of the border is a joint responsibility of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the coalition forces. The onus cannot be placed on Pakistan alone.

Indeed, there is intense cooperation, through such formal partnerships as the military Tripartite Commission - made up of Pakistan, Afghanistan and NATO - its new Operational Coordination Working Group and a recently established Joint Intelligence Operations Center in Kabul. Apart from intelligence sharing, Pakistan would benefit from Western-supplied electronic and other equipment to crack down on illegal border movement more effectively.

Fourth, Pakistan will act shortly to remove any last basis for allegations about so-called "safe havens" for the Taliban in Pakistan. After crossing into Pakistan, Taliban elements often merge into the large population at camps for Afghan refugees.

To resolve this problem, we have reached an agreement with the Afghan government to move four large camps - Pir Alizai and Gidri Jungle in Baluchistan Province, and Jallozai and Kachi Garhi in the North-West Frontier Province - to Afghanistan. Pakistan will also repatriate the last of the 3 million Afghan refugees who have found protection inside its borders within the next three years. We have been their host for 30 years without any appreciable international assistance, which has placed a tremendous burden on our economy and contributed to the rise of militancy.

Finally, Pakistan has a comprehensive strategy to promote peace and progress in our frontier regions. The objective is to win over the local population and to isolate the militants. The agreement that the Pakistani government reached with tribal elders in North Waziristan last September was essentially an exchange of peace for economic development.

Contrary to the assertions of some Afghans, there is no proved relationship between that agreement and the rise of violent incidents in Afghanistan last year. Rather, the recent military strikes by tribal forces against Uzbeks and other foreign militants in South Waziristan should confirm the effectiveness of our approach. Pakistan has advocated a similar approach in working with tribal leaders on the Afghanistan side of the border, in which Kabul would reach agreements through local assemblies, or jirgas. This idea was the essence of the three-party meeting of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the coalition forces organized by Washington in September. It led to the first meeting of the Pakistan and Afghanistan jirga commissions in January in Islamabad. The sides agreed to increase cooperation to address common problems of border control and refugee repatriation.

In the long run, joint efforts by Afghanistan and Pakistan are about more than terrorism: each country desperately needs development. We are grateful for the United States commitment of $750 million over the next five years for Pakistan's tribal areas. We hope for more help from other donors for this vital objective.

A key part of Pakistan's effort is to create "reconstruction opportunity zones" in the tribal areas. Pakistan's private sector will invest in industry and manufacturing, while Washington has promised special tariff- and duty-free access in the United States market for products from these areas. The European Union should provide such access as well. In turn, we would provide help to Afghanistan in creating similar economic zones on its side of the border.

The cooperative framework that has been established by Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States, NATO and the international community will be vital for success. But we must insure that bond is not eroded by mutual recrimination or frustration with occasional setbacks.
Munir Akram is Pakistan's ambassador to the United Nations.
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Iran to send Afghan refugees packing
TEHRAN, April 7 (UPI) -- Iran says it will send some 1 million Afghan refugees back to their embattled homeland this month.

Iranian Press TV reported the refugees have already been told to get themselves and their possessions ready to move out in the near future.

Interior Minister Mostafa Purmohammadi was quoted as saying repatriation had been stalled by winter weather and budget limitations.

He also said "illegal" Afghan immigrants would each get about $100 for their trip home, a policy that will cost Iran about 200 billion rials ($21.6 million) for the repatriation of 1 million people.

Iran has been detaining and deporting refugees this year, but Afghans continue entering the country.
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What the government won't tell you: we are losing Afghan hearts
By Adam Holloway 12:01am BST 08/04/2007 Telegraph.co.uk, UK
Our success or failure in Helmand depends not on warlords, or the governor of the province, or even special forces soldiers, but on the ordinary Afghans. And while we are spectacularly winning the war at the tactical level against the Taliban, we are rapidly losing the fight for those ordinary hearts and minds.

The Taliban cannot beat our brave and committed Armed Forces in any sort of conventional military engagement. But the Afghan people also trusted us to provide security and reconstruction: as they see it, we are providing neither.

Recently, I travelled to Helmand, not with the Army but under my own arrangements to talk to ordinary Afghans. On official trips I speak to everyone but them. Sometimes in the bases, talking to senior officers and officials, you feel as though you are on Salisbury Plain with the heating turned up. Such conversations are surreally devoid of local Afghan influence, save the edicts of the Kabul government.

advertisementIn Helmand I learned that while the Afghans want us there, it is so that we provide precisely that reconstruction and security. We the British talk a good plan in terms of development and governance.

The only problem is that we are not delivering our "comprehensive approach". The Department for International Development's contribution has been woeful.

"They sit in their office in the British base and write reports for London," said one local.

Only a few months ago the Taliban were a remote force, but now, as one person put it, "they are not in the mountains - they are in the houses." Not a mile from the British base fly white Taliban flags.

A friend of mine narrowly missed abduction recently just the other side of the river from Lash Kar Gar, the provincial capital. Some families are said to be sending a son to work with the Taliban - to protect the poppy fields, and for $10 a day. Our Royal Engineers have built checkpoints on the edges of Lash Kar Gar, but the Afghan army are said to be too afraid to man them at night - so security, even in this centre of an "Afghan Development Zone", remains an aspiration. Other checkpoints merely provide cover from view for Afghan police to rob road users. The Afghan government's department of health is reported to ask Taliban permission before carrying out child inoculations in most rural areas: this is "peace through reality".

There is the international dimension too - more Iraq-style roadside bombs (they are learning), as well as command and control based in Pakistan: after some engagements 25 per cent of the dead are reported to be foreigners to the country. Since 2001 the Taliban have undoubtedly reorganised at the grassroots, as one might expect. But one never expected the Afghan villagers - who mainly detested them then - to, if not embrace them, now see them increasingly as somehow their feared protector.

Of course my knowledge is based on imperfect information, but I think we are contributing to the insurgency. While Afghans have cheered our troops following engagements with the Taliban, there seemed to be a widespread feeling amongst the people I spoke to in Lash Kar Gar that we are killing a lot of people through bombing, that there are many thousands of displaced people from the north, that people in the north are angry with the British, and that the Taliban are the only people who can protect poppy crops. In a sense it does not matter whether or not this is true. What matters is that they have come to think this, and that the Taliban exploit this and so are winning the information war.

Most families in Helmand are in some way involved in opium production. While the US wants mass eradication programmes, the Royal Marines believe that eradication fuels the insurgency, and that unless you have some sort of alternative lifestyle for people you should not destroy poppy. The UK might be the "lead" nation on drugs, yet we continue to help with eradication and recently supplied - via the Royal Logistics Corps base in Kandahar - 80 tractors for the purpose. So we are effectively throwing resources at a policy that results in increased violence against our troops. One official told me that we had to do some eradication, otherwise the US would steam in and do a lot more - so our eradication is a means of managing the US, not a means of managing insurgency.

It is not as if there is any sort of meaningful development in Helmand. Ministers are bombarded with statistics about the money being spent on this: a dam here, irrigation there, a road construction project somewhere else. But, particularly in Helmand, it is small change compared with the military spending. We are also passing development cash through the ministries in Kabul, not spending it directly on projects branded as British in Helmand province. Even though we are doing something for the people there, they cannot see it.

We are brightly told that next year one of the UN agencies will come to town, and that, anyway, you can't have development until you have security. I think it is the other way round: you won't have security until you show the Afghans that we really are here to help.

What is wrong with paying Afghans to do the work themselves? Suppose there are 200,000 five-person families in Helmand (that figure is as accurate as can be given). Until the international funding ran out, there was a very large agricultural development programme run by an Afghan engineer in the province. According to that engineer, a family of five would need four acres of orchard to sustain a reasonable life. He says that his own programme could achieve that result at the cost of around £250 an acre. Much of that money would be used to pay farmers and their families to do the work needed to convert their land to fruit crops. Multiply £1,000 by 200,000 families, and you get the figure of £200 million. It is a staggering amount of money. But it is considerably less than we are already spending per year on the campaign in Helmand.

The engineer believes that a determined effort at creating alternative livelihoods would make a gigantic difference to the insurgency. I am sure he is right. Once the orchards (or whatever mix of alternatives you eventually deliver) mature to production, most families won't want to produce opium. After that, the farmers who were producing legitimate crops might not feel like "lending" their sons to the Taliban. And once that happened, a virtuous circle of increasing peace and prosperity would have a chance of being established

But that is not what is happening today. Despite everything you hear from ministers on the news, Helmand is on the edge of a precipice. The only people, apart from the British public, who are fooled by the official reports insisting that everything is "on target" in Afghanistan are the ministers back in London who read them.

The officials who write the reports know perfectly well that they do not give an accurate picture. As one senior MI6 officer put it to me: "No one gets promoted by saying things are going badly in public. They do in private, and that just makes the cynicism so much worse."

The Afghans themselves of course know what is really happening. The Government's attempts to export the arts of spin to rural Helmand have been a dismal failure. Pretending black is white may have worked in Britain. It doesn't work in Afghanistan.

We are in Afghanistan for the right reasons. Ministers rightly point to the many good things that are happening beyond the military activity, and you don't change a society like this in seven days. Our troops are keeping their side of the bargain and performing with great heroism, buying time for development and governance initiatives to take hold. But the Armed Forces are being let down by the absence of these things.

A major reason that Iraq has not been a success is because, as a coalition, we failed to get to grips with the most basic need of the Iraqi people: security. Our Government needs to wake up to the real possibility of another strategic failure in Afghanistan if we do not turn words into action very, very soon. We can still do something about it, but there's not much time. If we do not, it will not only be the Afghan people who will be in greater danger: Britain will be as well.

Adam Holloway is Conservative MP for Gravesham and a member of the Defence Select Committee.
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Large consignment of drugs confiscated on Tajik-Afghan border
07.04.2007, 19.57
DUSHANBE, April 7 (Itar-Tass) - A large consignment of drugs was confiscated on the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan on the night from April 6 to April 7, sources at the press center of the National Security Committee’s border service told Itar-Tass.

Border guards detained three Afghan traffickers who were trying to carry drugs to Tajikistan. They had almost 13 kilograms of opium and heroin.

An inquiry was opened, with investigators trying to find out who was the addressee of the cargo in Tajikistan.

Since the beginning of the year, more than 700 kilograms of narcotics have been detained on the border, and security service analysts say this year’s spring and summer will be a hard time for the border guards, as the projected production of heroin in neighboring Afghanistan may reach 800 tons.

Afghan drug cartels may try to export about a third of that amount via the northern route, that is, via Tajikistan.
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Karzai's olive branch to opponents sans Omar, Hekmayar
KABUL, Apr 6 (Pajhwok Afghan News): President Hamid Karzai has once again asked Taliban to shun violence and join hands with the government to rebuild their country.

However, the president clarified that the invitation was not meant for Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar, Hezb-i-Islami chief Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the non Afghans.

Admitting his government's dialogue with some Taliban to bring them into the fold of reconciliation, the president said a number of them had accepted the offer and joined the government.

President Karzai was addressing a press conference in Kabul on Friday. On this occasion, the president informed journalists about his meetings with SAARC leaders in New Delhi.

He said the member countries assured their full support to Afghanistan. Karzai said he had also met Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on the sideline of the two-day SAARC summit and held 'important' talks with him.

Facing a volley of questions about the formation of a new alliance, the National Front or Milli Jubha, by mostly former mujahidin leaders and communist era officials, Karzai said some information suggested involvement of foreign embassies in the formation of the said alliance.

"We have received some information suggesting hand of foreign embassies in its formation," Karzai said when asked about involvement of some countries in the creation of the new alliance.

He said the Foreign Ministry and the directorate of the national security or intelligence department had investigated involvement of foreign countries in the formation of the alliance.

The National Front announced by former President Burhanuddin Rabbani two days back had demanded parliamentary system instead of presidential in the country. However, Karzai expressed his opposition to the suggestion.

He said the existing system was implemented in line with the Constitution of the country. "Afghanistan is not a laboratory to test new systems after every three or four years," said Karzai.

"I dont know about that," was the president's remarks when a questioner asked about the National Front's demand regarding acceptance of the Durand Line.

Afghanistan's stance on Duran Line was very clear if the leaders of the National Front had any suggestion about the borders of the country, said Karzai.

The president defended his government's secret deal with Taliban for the release of the Italian journalist, but said it was an exceptional case and would not be repeated in future.

He appreciated the past and present cooperation from the government of Italy and said had they not come forward to save the Italian citizen, the government of that country might face serious problems at home.

Regarding the fate of the Afghan captive Ajmal Naqshbandi, the president said he had detailed discussion with the intelligence chief this morning on the issue.

About the continued occupation of the Musa Qala district of the southern Helmand province by the Taliban, Karzai said the action had been delayed because the government did not want harm to the citizens.
Khalid Moahid
Translated and edited by Daud
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Intelligence official gunned down in Khost
KANDAHAR CITY, Apr 6 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Unidentified armed men attacked and killed an official of the intelligence department in the southeastern Khost province.

Salim Kamran, spokesman for Khost governor, told Pajhwok the incident happened in Mandikhel area of the city last evening.

He said driver of the slain official received injuries in the attack. The assailants managed to escape the scene, said the spokesman.

The injured taxi driver told Pajhwok a motorcyclist opened fire at them in the Mandikhel area. He said the official killed while two other passengers, traveling with them, stayed unhurt.
Majid Arif
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